Alex Haley Home - New York City

Alex Haley's home is located on Grove Street in New York City's Greenwich Village.  It was here the Pulitzer Prize winning author lived during the 1960's and produced his first book, The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  Haley was Born in Ithaca, New York in 1921, moved to Henning, Tennessee, before returning to New York, then spent time at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, and Elizabeth City State College in North Carolina, before withdrawing from college and joing the United States Coast Guard in 1939.  He retired from the Coast Guard in 1959 and moved to New York with aspirations for a career in journalism.  He spent time at Reader's Digest and Playboy magazine before his most important foray into journalism took place here, in his Grove Street home, starting in 1963.  Beginning that year Haley undertook a partnership with civil rights activist Malcolm X to work on his autobiography.  Their somewhat contentious, yet ultimately respectful relationship was tested during two years worth of late night interview sessions conducted by Haley in his basement apartment.  Each session would last for several hours and from this Haley was able to piece together, over time, Malcolm X's life from poverty and prison to his notoriety as an activist.  On February 21, 1965 Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom by several members of the Nation of Islam.  Haley was then left to interpret the information left to him.  Although considered to be the book's ghostwriter, his literary instincts did help to guide the story in a more dramatic sense than Malcolm X was initially moving towards.  In this way, many followers feel that Haley was in actuality more of a co-author than ghostwriter.  The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in October of 1965 by Grove Press after Doubleday balked in the wake of the assassiantion.  The book has since been critically lauded as one of the most important non-fiction books of the 20th Century.  Haley would late go on to author Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which was published in 1976 and earned him the Pulitzer Prize.  There is a plaque outside the Grove Street apartment commemorating Haley's time here.      

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